The Genetics Society of America (GSA) has announced the election of four new members to its board of directors and three are AAAS Fellows. The three fellows are, Stanley Fields (Vice-President/President-Elect), Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena (Director), and Craig Pikaard (Director). The fourth new member is Deborah Yelon (Director).
Fields is a professor in the Department of Genome Sciences and the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). His research has centered on methods of protein analysis, although other efforts have gone into DNA and RNA methodologies and yeast genome engineering.
de Villena is a professor and Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His uses the common house mouse as a model for the genetic dissection of complex traits. In particular, his research addresses two phenomena: true meiotic drive (i.e., non-random segregation of chromosomes during meiosis) and parent-of-origin effects (including but not restricted to gene imprinting).
Pikaard is professor in the Departments of Biology and Molecular & Cellular Biochemistry at Indiana University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute'Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Investigator. He studies gene regulation using techniques from genetics, genomics, biochemistry, cell biology and molecular biology. His projects focus on the roles of chromatin-modifying enzymes and noncoding RNAs in gene silencing and epigenetic phenomena; in particular, they are well-known for their work on ribosomal RNA gene organization and expression and RNA-mediated gene silencing.
The newly elected board members begin their tenure on January 1, 2015, and will remain on the GSA Board through December 31, 2017.
Congratualations to all four distinguished researchers!
To read the full press release from the Genetics Society of America (GSA) please go to this web page.